


venus in fleurs

by indications



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 10:00:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indications/pseuds/indications
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>6.7k of boring-ass white boys touchin dicks</p>
            </blockquote>





	venus in fleurs

It shouldn’t have been the Drift that gave you away.

Hermann has had every opportunity to come to the realization that you’d do any number of illegal and/or immoral things to get his cock in your mouth, that sometimes when he gets mean you’ve got to screech at him because what you really want to do is roll over and show your belly and beg for another, that the only way to keep your shit on lock is to take your frustration out in petty, vicious arguments that leave you flush for hours. But whatever you say about him, he’s the most brilliant man you’ve ever met – not that you’d need brilliance to parse the way you look at him – and he’s never been slow to the deductions. He knows you want his dick, but he’s got better things to do than laugh in your face. The world’s always a hair’s breadth from ending, humans are going to have to consider putting themselves on the endangered species list someday soon, and you live in that skinny sliver on the brink of catastrophe where there’s no room for – he’d say _dalliances_ , you’d say _fucking around_.

It always felt, weirdly, like getting away with murder, this one-sided crush of yours. Jerking it thinking about his icy narrowed-eyed glare and the prissy purse of his lips and the way he’d look down his nose at you, make you beg for it, make you humiliate yourself teary-eyed, and still not give you an inch. He knows, he’s _got_ to, you’re so obvious about it, and yet he never says a word. But that’s fine – you imagine clearly enough the sneer he’d give you if he deigned to acknowledge the literal fucking rageboners, _plural,_ you have gotten up during your more ill-advised screaming matches, the ones that don’t go anywhere, just sizzle and snap between you for hours. The current that animates you, some days.

Half the time it’s more revenge fantasy than anything. When he pisses you off especially bad, or when you lose an argument, or when his figures come out straight and there’s no way out of admitting _you were wrong and he was right_ – especially then – you imagine fucking the smirk off his ugly froggy face, blowing him till his eyes cross and his mouth goes slack and his hands fist in your hair, making him come stuttering, incoherent, helpless. You bounce back twice as hard in the morning. You show him up, next time. You sleep less, you push harder.

He cuts you no slack, ever, cutting at you, singing at your fraying edges till you’re not sure if he’s keeping you sharp or running you ragged. But it works. You work. You’re both too brilliant and too stubborn by far to admit you’re fighting a losing war.

You’re fighting a losing war, and at the end of the day he is, however reluctantly, your colleague, and he owes it to his own pride as much as to his nearly-religious zeal for maths and to the rising body count and to the dwindling number of people left on this earth, he _owes_ it, to correct your numbers and needle at you and keep you on your toes. Lord knows, as he himself has noted, he’s not doing it for his bloody health.

It shouldn’t be the Drift that gives you away. You don’t need giving-away, he knows, he was supposed to have _known_ , it was one-sided but it was out in the open. Just – unspoken.

He tears you to bits for every up-down he catches you giving him, but you figured that was run-of-the-mill disgust. You’ve gotten hard-ons yelling at him, but it hadn’t occurred to you he was too busy shrieking at your face to check what was going on in your pants. You both heard the sound you made, that one time he got so angry with you he actually whacked you with his cane – he’d hit you across the thighs for God’s sake, you’d sworn there was no misinterpreting the pitch of the yelp you made.

It wasn’t supposed to – but a lot wasn’t supposed to happen, and Drifting with a strangled Kaiju fetus was not the least of them. You thought- you thought. Wrong. Nice one, Newt, myopic till your dying day. The little frolic you take through each other’s heads clears everything up: the way he’d spit at you when he caught you looking him over was to cover the shame, that you of all people, you who knew him well enough to know better, still found time to _stare_. The surety that you were – were _making fun of him_ , when you’d toss lewd comments over at his side of the lab with the usual barrage of viscera; the particular fury, reserved for just you, at being – _disrespected_ , he thought you didn’t _respect_ him, he thought you were _laughing_ at him, he thought-

Well, at least you weren’t the only one who was wrong.

That’s the end of your relief, though – okay, maybe you were going to possibly actually blow him under his desk someday, maybe possibly in an alternate fantasy universe. But even in your weirder fantasies, you never actually wanted him to see, from the inside of your brain – well, any of your weirder fantasies. _Any_ of your fantasies, period. 

But it’s fine. It’s fine. Now it’s all out in the open, like it was supposed to be. Understood, but unspoken. Everything’s all fine between you, everything’s clear. Everything’s great, you’ve won, you’ve saved the world, you’re big damn heroes, you’re rockstars.

The second the chaos abates, and you’ve hugged him (just once!) for good measure, you let him go his way, do his own thing, and predictably enough he slinks off the minute the opportunity presents itself. It’s cool. You both get it, now, you get everything, and there’ll be time for the workplace embarrassment and the nauseating spin left by the bits of Hivemind still churning in your mind _after_ you’ve pickled yourself in alcohol like a fresh cut of Kaiju spleen. There are revelries! You made it, you did it, you’re done. It’s all over.

You don’t see him till the next afternoon, when you manage to peel yourself out of bed and straggle into the lab. The ammonia reek’s so dramatically reduced it stops you in the doorway – _this is not my beautiful lab_ , you think, _this is not my beautiful wife!_ But really, your lab – _your_ lab – is damp, cold, and entrail-splattered. If it’s not like you left it, is it still yours? He’s in there directing clean-up, _already_ , and your heart leaps for fear of your babies, your beautiful precious specimens, the last flesh of your own kind still on this side ( _ignore that thought, it’s not yours_ ). But no, before you can even shout, he’s locked eyes with you, and you swallow your preemptive protest because no, you know he wouldn’t, of course he wouldn’t. But the floors are clean, for once, and the crew moving boxes out (when did he get up? Did he even _sleep_ last night, or just organize obsessively?) tell you his side’s about to be much, much cleaner. 

“Hey,” you say, and trot on over but don’t stand too close. Give him space, now. 

“How good of you to join us,” he says drily, and looks you over like – like. Your stomach flip-flops. Damn, he – really looks you over. “Don’t suppose you’d like to make yourself useful instead of standing there agape.” Not even a question, cool, great, you’ll just-

“Sure,” you say. _Stupid, stupid mouth_. “Soon as you tell me exactly what’s-” 

“Wonderful. You’ll have to sort through your own mess, I’m afraid, I simply haven’t the constitution-” and he’s steering you by the elbow to your side of the room, _all_ the way, in fact, till you’re standing against the opposite wall, out of earshot of the guys moving boxes of Hermann’s shit and he leans close to you, gets up in your space and you go so tense, uncertain, you barely breathe. “I thought it might be pertinent to move the more sensitive bits of my work somewhere less vulnerable to – prying,” he says, low, unnecessarily low, nobody’s listening in here, that’s just paranoid- “You might want to do the same.”

No, come on, no way, that can’t be all he – but it is, and he lets go of your elbow and shouts at someone over your shoulder to _be careful with that, I’ve labeled it ‘fragile’ on five damned sides, I trust you’ve enough education to string together seven letters-_

And he’s got a point. Ten years always on the verge of apocalypse, people were just trying to stay alive. But now that mankind’s back to its rightful rank as apex predator, it’s probably just a matter of time before people start going for each other again. Hell, you’ve had research stolen – grad school, when you were sixteen, didn’t know any better till it was your word against theirs, and you’ll be damned if all this, all your sleepless nights manic if not miserable, turn into some coward’s paycheck or some government weapons tech. God knows they’d try.

So you pack up. Specimens and notes and equipment and your hard drives, and you label them all stupid shit like _box o bees_ and _doomsday device_ and Hermann doesn’t get in your way but he doesn’t exactly give you space, either. And you want to talk, but there’s nothing to say. They were right about that. Not that you didn’t believe it, but there’s doing the figures and banking on the results and seeing it for yourself, every time – and then there’s actually _living_ it. There’s the ringing certainty of all the thoughts he’s ever had, right there in your very own overstuffed head to peruse whenever you like and whenever you don’t – no escaping them, you know everything he knows and he knows everything you do and there’s the Hivemind, too, all tangled up in both of you like threads, like veins, like strings of mucus and viscous bile and ropy entrails, like cancer, burning, squirming. And with all of that and the set of his mouth, the rigid straightness of his back – your mind’s stuffed full and your mouth’s dry, empty, and there’s nothing for you to say. Nothing at all.

Hours pass. This used to happen so easy. You’d sit down to work at six in the morning (you’d wake up at six with your notes pasted to your cheek with drool, half your face numb from passing out at your desk _again_ ) and then suddenly it’d be ten at night and you’d go, _huh, where’d the day go?_ Now, okay, you know exactly where it went: lining boxes and sifting through shit and not looking across the lab at him not looking across the lab at you. And the bustle of people, in and out, hungover as you are but probably not as brain-damaged, probably not as hemorrhage-scarred, probably not as lingeringly guilty and nauseous and triumphant and bereft.

It’s busywork. You always hated busywork. You can’t focus, but no alternative sounds better – and hours pass, and then it’s eleven at night and you’ve been unpacking and repacking the same box without realizing it, trying to make everything fit. Where’d Hermann even get all these boxes? It’s disorienting, Christ, not knowing where he got them makes you sick to your stomach, you should know, you must remember – you remember everything else, _everything else_ , except what happened last night. Where did you get these boxes?

You’re compartmentalizing, you realize. He’s compartmentalizing, and he’s trying to make you do it, too. You never used to do this. You never put walls up, never ever – you didn’t see lines, didn’t recognize barriers. You’d do anything without pausing to think, leap without looking, talk without bothering to care what it sounded like, and not even sweep up the pieces behind you. And now you’ve spent all day not speaking, not doing _anything_ productive, just trying to put walls where there aren’t any. Suddenly you need them.

You don’t need them. _He_ needs them, he’s always needed them, and if you don’t say something he’s going to pack this in a box and never look at it again, like he can freeze you out, shut this down. He’s scared, and he’s not going to say so. You’re never going to talk about this if you don’t say something.

Hermann’s not in the lab. He hasn’t been for a while, and you haven’t left to follow him. And you don’t, right away. You leave your shitty pointless box of irrelevant, obsolete junk where it is and you go back to your room. Put on a passably-clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt. White, or it used to be – more gray, now, and with holes in the hem where it got splattered with acid you didn’t notice till it’d burned through your pants, too. Worn thin, so your tattoos show underneath. Go for vulnerable. He’ll appreciate it if you bare your throat first. Hell, maybe he won’t – maybe he’ll hate you for it, maybe he’ll bite you where he knows you’re tender, maybe he won’t notice the shirt or the tattoos showing under it, won’t parse or appreciate the gesture at all. Maybe it’s over already.

You never used to think like this. You know it’s him, this leaden feeling. Two sides of the same coin – his stupid, ill-fitting, grandpa-esque clothes and his pinched expression and his hilariously sensitive ego all masking self-doubt; re-running his figures, every time, no matter how sure he was, because one time in a thousand there’d be a mistake, something small, some imprecision –  no _wonder_ he always demolished you with the empiricals. You stand in front of your grimy mirror in your thin shirt and you think of Hermann and you second-guess yourself, for the first time in ten years. _Really_ second-guess yourself. It’s almost luxurious. Masochistic. There’s a worn ache underneath that feels like – like waking up in the middle of the night in so much pain you can’t sit up, and running numbers in your head till you can stretch the cramps out, pressing your fingers in hard, right where it hurts most. Like cold that gets in your bones, no matter how many layers you’re under. Like taking a scalpel to your flaws and excising them, pitilessly, because no one knows your shortcomings like you do. Scar tissue. Phantom pains. All Hermann, all in your brain where he doesn’t belong but still, somehow, fits.

There’s a bottle of jaegermeister under your bunk, behind mounds of clutter and dust bunnies. Bought at the beginning of the war when you thought it’d be funny – toast the end of the Kaiju, an end you were so sure was coming, when victory seemed inevitable on the horizon. You pull it out and dust it off and walk to Hermann’s room, and when you knock on the door you break out in a cold sweat.

For a second, when he opens it, you’re scared like you’ve never ever been. Otachi didn’t scare you this bad. Hannibal Chau didn’t scare you this bad. The first Drift, alone, rudderless in the writhing fractured screaming Hivemind, didn’t scare you this bad.

Skinny, trout-faced, pasty-skinned, socially awkward former mathlete Hermann Gottleib stands there biting the inside of his cheek and he _terrifies_ you, down to your fucking bones.

And then he stands aside in the door, and he looks away, and he says stiffly, “Took your time, didn’t you.”

You come in, holding the bottle of jaeger in front of you like the olive branch it transparently is. “Brought you,” you say, “uh. Thought you might. Have a drink with me?" 

“Sit,” he says.

You sit, on the edge of his bed. You know everything in this room. You’ve spent so much time here, in his memory. Your heart’s thundering in your ears. _Like a naughty schoolboy_ , you think, in his voice – in his father’s voice. _Pathetic._  

“Here.” He hands you a mug he must have swiped from the mess hall – you don’t remember this mug. You wonder if that’s intentional, if he means to disorient you or spare you his memories, holding a cup your hands have never touched before. You’re shaking. When the fuck did the stakes get this high?

You hear the snap and hiss of a seal breaking on something carbonated – Coke. He’s pouring himself – and then you – _Coca-Cola;_ he doesn’t drink Coke, why the _fuck_ is he –

“Now give me that,” he says, surprisingly gently, and you let him take the jaeger and open it and pour – both of you, jaeger and Coke, how did he _know_ –

“How the fuck did you know,” you say. “When did you buy Coke, Hermann, you _hate_ Coke, why did you know I was going to-” Because he did know, it’s obvious, he knew you were going to come find him and that you were going to bring this bottle of jaegermeister you’ve had stashed under your bed for seven years and _you_ didn’t even know, until ten minutes ago, that you were going to. And he’s not laughing at you, he’s not even cold – he’s _gentle_ , you can’t take gentleness from him, you’ve never seen Hermann ice-queen Gottlieb gentle like this with –

With anybody but his _wife_ – 

And you spent the better part of the past decade fantasizing sporadically about fucking him, yeah, but you didn’t know him then and you weren’t planning to, ever, didn’t wanna get this close, didn’t want to know how he likes his coffee or how many times he was hit as a child or how long it’s been since he cried. You didn’t want this and you’re not ready for it now and you wish he didn’t _know_ that, didn’t know _everything_. You thought you were ready to be vulnerable. You thought vulnerable meant a worn t-shirt as a white flag, thought it’d be easy, straightforward, an equation you could balance: you’d do shots with him till you got the nerve up to make a joke about wanting to blow him, and he’d roll his eyes and know you meant _sorry_ , sorry for every time you said he looked like a little boy playing dress-up in daddy’s clothes, sorry for seeing all his dirty secrets and forcing him to bear the burden of yours. And you’re shaking so bad and your heart’s beating so hard and your mind’s in a tailspin, and all he did was pour you a stupid drink he should never have known to buy.

“The only thing I hate more than Coca-Cola is that godawful licorice-flavored swill. It’s not even a good pun, Newton.” He puts his skinny fingers over yours, steadies your hand on the mug. Holds his own up with an ironic smile. “ _Jaegermeister_ , really. I’m appalled you never poured it out.”

You grin. You’re never going to be able to raise your drink for a toast. Your arms are numb. “Don’t be mad just because you didn’t think of it,” you say. “Shit is always and forever funny, even if you are a humorless, bitter geezer at heart.”

“Cheers,” he says, and knocks his mug into yours. It sloshes, predictably, and you force yourself to gulp it down before your trembling hand can drop it.

He grimaces, all for show, as he puts his cup down emptied. “Awful,” he says. Superfluous. He’s obviously trying to be kind, give you both an easy out, give you the foundations of a wall where there’s never going to be one, never ever again. 

“Totally,” you agree. “Probably just poisoned ourselves.” 

“It should come as no surprise that I’ll be blaming my untimely death entirely on you.”

“If we don’t talk about the Drift I’m going to have an actual fucking panic attack,” you say, and hiccup on the beginnings of a sob. “Pour me another shitty drink, I’m shaking too bad to do it myself.” 

He pours you another shitty drink without a word, heavy on the jaeger because you both know you’re just going to keep drinking till you’re drunk, and sooner’s better. “If you spill on my bed I will hit you with my cane,” he says, as he hands it to you. “And not in the nice way.”

“Bless you for saying that with a straight face.” You down your drink, wincing – too sweet, too strong, and you’re nauseous with stimulation overload already. When you finish it, you look him in the face again – hate yourself for doing it, hate how hollow your chest feels, hate his perfect jaw and the sense-memory of every mouth that’s ever touched his.

“I’m not gonna try to sleep with you,” you say. “Sorry you had to see all that stuff about me wanting. All that stuff. Um. I didn’t mean it.”

“Don’t be a coward,” he says, and touches – he fucking touches your hand, and doesn’t flinch when you pull away. “Newton, you very much meant it and I-”

“Well it’s fine, I was never going to actually-”

“Wouldn’t mind if you _did_ -”

“Don’t fuck with me!” You’re standing, breathing hard. Feeling like a rat in a cage. Feeling like Otachi’s baby, trapped, dying, knowing you’re dying and unable to resist the urge to chase, claw, maim, strangle yourself. Panicking. “Don’t you dare fuck with me, Hermann, I am trying to do this right but I need you to meet me halfway-”

“And what is it, exactly, that you’re trying to do right?” He’s looking at you like – you don’t _know_ , you should know, you must know. You are crushed under the weight of knowing, not knowing, all the wrong things.

“I don’t know.” Christ, why don’t you – “I don’t, Hermann, I wish I did, I just want to make things right with you-”

“Make things right, do it right-" 

“You are such a fucking ice queen, will you _please_ -”

“What have I done to earn your fear?” He looks angry – indignant. Confused? “How on _earth_ , Newton, of all things, of all people – you, brave to the point of stupidity-” 

“Yeah, great, insult my intelligence, that really turns me on-” 

“Or shall I tell you you’ve been a bad boy, is that how you’d like this to go?” 

Your face heats up, all at once. That was _low._ “You heartless _fuck_ , I’m trying to be your friend!” 

“And I’m trying to get you to come to bed with me!”

He’s not even attractive, like this, blushing in two spots high in his cheekbones. And his mouth, too, might as well admit it – his lips blush, too, damn him. But it’s not becoming, it’s ugly, because he doesn’t mean it, because even if he thinks he does it’s all you, all Drift, your brain poisoning his head and you don’t want that, never wanted that.

“No you’re not. You’re not, you don’t even like me-”

“I barely _knew_ you, Newton, we’ve hardly spoken a word at normal volume in ten years!”

“We’re not speaking now!” you shout, because it’s true, because you don’t think you know how to not shout at him. It’s the only thing left anymore that isn’t stolen, a trespass. “And that’s fine! It’s great! I just – I just wanted-”

“ _What_?” he shrieks, “What do you bloody well _want_ of me?”

You’re a balloon, punctured. You sag. You collapse inward. _I don’t know_ , your brain screams, _I don’t know I don’t know anymore_ -

And he’s getting up – he’s getting up, you need him to not get up- 

“Don’t you dare,” you say – don’t shout – “Don’t, Hermann, I can’t-”

He does anyway. He heaves himself to his feet and there isn’t enough room to back away, and you can’t get your arms up in time to stop him catching you face between both hands, thumbing – blood – blood from your upper lip, another nosebleed, you didn’t even feel it-

“When are you going to start calling me Doctor Gottlieb,” he says, way too quietly. “I’ve told you and _told_ you, Newton.”

“No,” you say, weak, knees shaking, you can’t do this – “Don’t, man, please just don’t-” Can’t, with his thin hands on the back of your neck, on your mouth, can’t, want to, want to _so badly_.

“Sorry,” he breathes. Just above a whisper. Takes his fingers from your lips all smeary with blood, and you lick them – your lips, not his fingers, god but you’d like – “I didn’t mean.” And his other hand goes, too, brushing the side of your neck before he pulls away. Your skin prickles where he’s touched you. “Tip your head back,” he says, more firmly, trying for stern, searching out steadier ground. “Don’t bleed on my floor.”

And he gives you space, even if it’s just for a second. Comes back again with a handkerchief that he holds out instead of pressing to your face. Lets you take it, steps back. Surrender, or what looks like it. And fuck him, you were gonna be the one to bare your throat, you were gonna let him come to you, and fuck you for not being able to, for not even letting him-

“Sorry,” you say. Pointless.

“Just sit down,” he says, and gestures to the bed again. “If you faint I’m not going to catch you.”

And you sit, and you tip your head back, and he doesn’t sit beside you this time. Leans hard on his cane, looking exactly how you feel – wrung-out and stupid and awkward and in desperate need of an actual adult. Hell, neither of you got to have real childhoods. No wonder you’re acting like babies now.

You’ve got to give. You’ve got to make yourself. _Be brave, Newt, he called you brave and you didn’t take the bait._ “Don’t just stand there, dude, come play doctor." 

His presses his lips into a thin line and rolls his eyes but he does, and you cooperate: lean forward, let him check your eyes all businesslike, not touching you except for his thumb under each eyebrow, one and then the other, pulling your eyelid up, make sure you’re not gonna hemorrhage your brains out. And you’re not, you know just where the damage is, but you don’t tell him so because you need the excuse to let him close. 

“You’re fine,” he says, and straightens up. 

You’re not fine. But when have you ever let that stop you? 

“Come sit anyway?”

He sighs. Needs this as much as you do, or he wouldn’t sit, but he does, and you see there’s still blood on his fingers.  

There’s a silence, and you try – you try your damnedest – to think of what to say. And there’s nothing. And he puts his hand on the bed between you, palm down, plenty of space, like he’s coaxing something reluctant, feral. Holding his breath, trying not to scare you off. How the fuck did he end up the initiator, and you flinching, teary-eyed, wanting him and too scared to-? 

You put your hand on top of his. He lets out the breath he was holding, slow, but the tension doesn’t go away.

“How did you want this to go?” you ask. He doesn’t look at you. “Hermann. Doctor Gottlieb.”

He startles at that, looks over. Smiles a small wry smile. “Absolutely not. You first. You came to me, Newt.”

“Man, _I_ don’t know.” He laughs, humorless, a little puff of air. “No, seriously. I thought, like, I’d come over and say hey and you’d let me get you drunk and we’d make up. Just – be friends. We should’ve been friends, man, what a waste of ten years.” 

“We were never going to be friends,” he scoffs. “Look at you. You’re-”

“An arrogant whining man-child Kaiju groupie, I _know_.”

“A bloody rockstar,” he says, and when he smiles his eyes narrow. And it’s not a dig at _you_ , you realize, this is all him – self-deprecating. Since _when_ , exactly?

“No way. Do not try to make this all about you, dude, you are the only person on this earth remotely as smart as I am and your sense of humor is like – fucking – Wodehouse crossed with the guy who did MASH, and underneath your mean-guy mask you are a grumpy kitten. You are hot _shit_ , Herman Gottlieb.” Oh, good, he’s gone flush across the bridge of his nose, too, and at the tips of his ears. _He called you a rockstar. Just go for it._ “You’ve got that hot professor thing going on. I used to get myself detention on purpose for guys like you.”

Even pink in the cheeks he manages to school his expression into something like indifference. “One, you stop getting detention in high school, which you graduated at fourteen. Two, you didn’t start feeling attracted to – you were in _college_ when you first–”

“Got hot for teacher?” He narrows his eyes, and he’s not smiling this time. “No, no, it’s cool, go ahead, remember that time I convinced that senior I was eighteen and we had sex in Professor Hauser’s office?” 

“ _No_ ,” he says firmly, and you laugh, and after a moment, so does he. “You are absolutely debauched but the point still stands.”

“One, I did _so_ get detention for guys like you in high school, I just didn’t start jerking off about it till I let those golden years of opportunity pass me by. Remember Mr. Visovsky?” He used to clear his throat when you were pissing him off, like Hermann sometimes does, and he wore similarly godawful penny loafers. Closest comparison you’ve got. True, it didn’t occur to you to fantasize about him till you were seventeen, but hey, you were a late bloomer. “Two, come on, we can’t all be playboys like you, you had your first kiss when you were _eleven_ -”

“And you saw what became of _that_ , of course.” Yeah, Hermann’s never been great with girls. Or anybody his age. Or, you know, _people_ , period. And you remember Angela, his first kiss, and you remember Vanessa, his wife. And you remember everything in between. And you smile, and take your hand off of his.

“Well, all I’m saying is I _get_ it. And I still think we should be friends. And seriously, don’t – you don’t want me, man, you’re not-” Well. Well there’s ‘straight’ and then there’s ‘ashamed’, and you’re not going to contend with either. With any of it. “You don’t fuck dudes.”

“Very diplomatic,” he says. “But that’s ‘haven’t,’, not ‘won’t’, and don’t presume to tell me what I will or will not do.”

“Okay, hotshot, your turn. How were _you_ planning to have this turn out? Huh? You planned this as much as I did. You bought _Coke_.” 

“It’s just soda, for God’s sake-”

“So you didn’t know I was coming, or bringing jaeger, and you didn’t know I always do jaeger with Coke.”

“You can’t insist I don’t want you and then ask me to tell you how I was hoping this would go.” And he looks you over, again, the same way he looked you over this morning in the lab, appraising and – approving and – like he wants you, like he wants-

“Tell me,” you say, “I told _you_ , come on-”

“Well I wasn’t going to let you walk in at all,” he says, all in a rush, and the pink in his cheeks is more like red now, “I was going to make you get on your knees at my door.”

You – you don’t know what your face does. Probably goes red to match his, although you’d be surprised your body managed to redirect any blood to your face when it feels like it’s all rushed to your groin. “Holy shit. Hermann.”

He laughs, looks away. “Forgive me, Doctor Geiszler, it’s been a long decade.” 

“No, that’s not what I – you thought that one up yourself. Christ. That happened in _your_ head.” _Not mine,_ you think, _that’s not my fault, I didn’t think that for him_. Makes you dizzy, thinking about him thinking about you. “So do I blow you with the door open or do you make me crawl or-” 

“I expected the jaeger,” he says. “Not the clothes-change. I was going to pull you in by your tie.”

Your cock twitches. “Christ,” you say again. “ _Fuck_. You’re not kidding.”

“And I’d make you _stay_ on your knees, on the floor, because you’re-” God, he’s so red, you’re gonna _die_ from how cute he is and from how badly you want to kiss him, all over, all of him, when did this get vanilla, you wanted him to choke you out against a wall and now all you want to do is hold his hands and tell him how gorgeous he is- “filthy,” he sputters, “absolutely filthy, and I won’t have you sitting on my clean sheets.”

“God,” you say, “yes,” and, “can we-”

He reaches up, one hand, so light on the side of your face, and you nod, and he licks his lips. “On the floor, I said.”

You have never hit the deck faster in your life. He scoots forward on the bed, lets you push his knees apart. He’s biting his lip when you look up at him.

“Tell me,” you say, “what you want me to do.”

“Anything,” he breathes, one hand coming down on top of your head, curling into your hair. “This.”

Yeah, okay, ‘this’ – you pull his shirt up, lean in, kiss his belly, feel his breath hitch and his muscles tense. ‘This’, your fingers fumbling his belt buckle and his other hand on your shoulder, and him making little sounds as you lick at his skin and palm him through his pants.

“Newton,” he says, voice pitched high and breathy. “Oh, Christ.” 

“Do you want,” you say, and swallow, and sit back on your heels. He follows you, leaning forward, keeping his hands on you, and you smile, and his breathing stays shallow and quick. “Do you want to go out with me sometime. After this.”

He gives you a look he’s given you before, when you’d just dashed entrails across his desk. So shocked he can’t move to angry yet, or – whatever. Just disbelieving, utterly floored. 

“You’re asking me on a date,” he says. 

“Yep.”

“You want to go out with me.”

“Pretty much.”

“ _After_ you’ve sucked me off.”

“You’re a real whiz, Herms.”

He continues to look flabbergasted. You lean in close again, up on your knees so his chest, and not his crotch, is eye-level.

“We could get actual beers. Like, pints. You and me. Hong Kong dive bar. My treat.”

“You can’t _get_ ‘actual beer’ in Hong Kong.”

“I know a guy.”

“No you _don’t_ , unless you’ve met someone in the past twenty-four-”

“Fine, we’ll _find_ a guy, or a lady, or whoever else. Beer. Not jaeger. You. Me. Date. Yes?”

“Dinner,” he says. “I refuse to comb about for an hour just to be grossly overcharged for something I’m sure will not be worth the search.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” you protest.

He grins. He is _devastating_ , smiling down at you. “Right here,” he says, hands around your neck, tipping your chin up as he leans down and, and you make the most embarrassing sound, a low needy moan you weren’t expecting, and he kisses you and he kisses you and you touch him, finally, finally. Hips, waist, stomach, thighs, up his chest and you’re all the way up on your knees when he puts both hands on your shoulders, pushes you down again.

“Down, boy,” he says, and when you laugh so does he, and he loosens his tie with one finger as you pull your glasses off, set them on the bed next to him.

“Be mean to me,” you say, and you’re so fucking hard and he’s unzipping his pants and god, his cock, Christ on a bicycle his fucking _cock_ \- “I love it when you get mean, Herms.”

He grabs a fistful of your hair and pulls your head _back_ – you want forward, you want his dick in your mouth you want- “Doctor Gottlieb,” he says. “Or ‘sir’. You do _not_ want me to get mean, Newton." 

“You gonna hit me with your cane?” you ask. “In the fun way?” 

He slaps you. It’s ugly – the flash that goes through your head, of all the times he’s been slapped, of the one time he was slapped just exactly like this – and you gasp, and he catches you by the hair again. “Behave,” he hisses, and it’s icy, and you have to look him in the face to make sure he’s just playing for you.

You almost wish you hadn’t. Guy’s got good voice control but his expression’s all _like me, please like me, please like this thing I’m doing especially for you_. You make a mental note to wake him up with breakfast and slow kisses tomorrow. You are going to treat him so fucking good. You are going to spoil him rotten for this. 

“Yessir,” you gasp. “Yes. Doctor Gottlieb. Please sir can I have your cock.”

He lets go of your hair, and you lean in so nice and you kiss him, so fucking sweet, right under his belly button, and _then_ you go for his cock.

He’s bigger than you thought he’d be. Yeah, you sometimes liked to imagine him big, because weirder things have happened, right, but honestly you’d thought he’d be a pretty little guy. Definitely not bigger than average. Makes you think of _Slaughterhouse Five_. You fucking hated that book. But you remember, weirdly, now – Billy Pilgrim, knock-kneed time-traveling nerd who got to fuck a porn star in front of a bunch of aliens. You were eleven when you read it, and you didn’t get it. But you remember laughing – dude had a giant schlong, just by chance – ‘anybody can end up with a giant dick’, Vonnegut wrote, or something to that effect. ‘It’s all luck of the draw.’ Weird book. Weirder, that you’re thinking of it now, with your tongue at the head of Hermann’s cock, and him panting, legs shaking. Skinny nerd with a seven-inch dick. Maybe more. You don’t remember him ever actually measuring. 

“Newton,” he gasps. You feel weirdly guilty. You really, really weren’t expecting Vonnegut, of all things, to show up and distract you from making Hermann jizz so hard he sees God. You’re still planning to do that. Fucking sci-fi novels.

You lap at the tip of his dick, ease his pants down his hips. Stroke him into your mouth with one hand, cup his balls with the other. He whines. You are so fucking good at this and he is so fucking thick and he’s moaning and shivering and so, so hot. You swallow. His dick tastes like dick. There’s not really anything else that dick ever tastes like. You don’t mind or enjoy it especially either way – it’s him saying your name, over and over, under his breath, like a prayer. _That’s_ what gets you off.

“Newton,” he says, “Newton, oh, god, please. Newton.” And you - you know exactly how to give it to him, know exactly how he likes it, and he is going to get just what he wants from you - wants - you, he _wants_ this from you -  

You come in your pants, no fuss, no nonsense, and you suck him as deep as you can take, and he moans all sweet and helpless. You don’t even want him to be mean to you anymore. You want him just like this, trying not to roll his hips, hands shaking stroking your shoulders, your hair. You are going to wreck him in the nicest way and you are going to do it _often_ , from now on. 

“I’m,” he says. “I. Oh. Please I.”

You don’t stop playing with his dick but you let off sucking him for a sec to say “Yeah, go for it, come in my mouth, you’re good, I’ve done this before-” 

“Ah, I _know_ you’ve- common courtesy, just-” Ohh no, he did _not_ just get the phrase ‘common courtesy’ out of his mouth without stuttering, you want him monosyllabic, you want him trembling – “Christ, Newton, _please_.”

That’s more like it. Closer, anyway, and you push him a little more, and a little more, and he shakes and he moans and you pull back just right, just in time, to be licking the head of his dick when he comes, and _comes_ , and okay, good thing you’ve got a handkerchief. 

“God,” he’s panting, “Newton, _oh_.”

You look up at him, and you smile, and you lick your fingers clean. 


End file.
